News Organizations Turn Down Holder Invite

Fox News joined several other major media outlets Thursday in refusing to send a representative to a meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder on the department's surveillance of reporters if Holder continues to insist that the session be off the record.

Michael Clemente, Fox News' executive vice president, decided that Fox News will not attend the off-record talks. Fox News had been invited to a Friday session at the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington.

With the decision, the two news outlets known to have been targeted by the Justice Department for surveillance -- the other being the Associated Press -- are now declining to participate in the first phase of Holder's internal review over the controversy. Several other outlets are also refusing to attend.

Both the Associated Press and Fox News had their phone records pulled by the Justice Department, in the course of two separate leak investigations. The department went a step further in the Fox News case, seizing the personal emails of correspondent James Rosen, while accusing him of being a criminal "co-conspirator" in the application for the search warrant.

Holder, who agreed to conduct a review of DOJ guidelines over investigations that involve journalists, had set up meetings with members of the media for Thursday and Friday. He ran into immediate resistance, though, after calling for the meetings to be off the record, meaning the discussions would not be reportable.

AP media relations manager Erin Madigan White said that if the session is not on the record, the news cooperative will offer its views in an open letter on how Justice Department regulations should be updated.

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